Summary
This paper argues the case for market researchers to use images in order to help marketers understand consumers. More broadly, it calls for market research to recognise that the language of images must be given due recognition in the corporate world. Images form a tool for social identity through history; the digital revolution has also led, the paper argues, to society becoming increasingly image-based. But images play a limited role in the mainstream methodological repertoire of market research - and this needs to change. Such a process represents a great new opportunity for semiotics to move into a more central role within market research. The paper suggests three methodological approaches to help improve understanding of the language of images: individual, social and cultural.

Summary
The approach of semiotics is to explore all the things visual and auditory that exist to make the climate right for an idea. Digital networks are speeding up the evolution of meaning. Establishing a semiotic framework can help a brand track where meaning is coming from and how and where it is moving. This article explains how semiotics can allow data to tell the story and then will help give a full understanding of the stories to be told. In turn, this level of understanding lends empathy for how a trend is building and makes the human at the heart of the story relatable.

Summary
This presentation looks at semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, and seeks to understand its power for creative development. It requires recognising that brands are also symbols and are inseparable from the culture that surrounds them. When branding, contradictory tone of voice and language can undermine effective messaging and this presentation provides insight on the importance of nuanced symbolic messaging for successful advertising. The presentation recommends the combining of culturally relevant text and imagery to ensure maximum ROI. It includes is a practical case study for the UK TV Licensing campaign.

Summary
This paper foresees an era of Quintegration: the mixing and merging of left brain and right brain, qualitative and quantitative applications, techniques and thinking. It presents a series of six Quintegrated approaches where such dualism is not only advantageous, but essential. These include advertising ROI, concept testing and co-creation forecasting. The paper also covers how traditional MR methods can be turned on their head and explored from the perspective of the opposing discipline, how these techniques might be applied in an increasingly data intensive world and why this is likely to change the future of the market research industry.

Summary
Why do most brands struggle with innovation, despite an abundance of consumer-facing insight? Semiotics, or the science of signs and symbols, when used wisely can help tie in all marketing activities including insights, new product development, strategic planning and execution. Semiotics is not a research but an analytical and creative development tool that can help uncover opportunities normally not available through traditional marketing planning.

Summary
Advertising regulation in China contains political and ideological nuances. Despite evolution of its advertising law and years of practice dealing with various codes, advertisers still find it daunting to decipher the regulations after years of practice. The ideological components of China’s advertising law require careful analysis of political correctness and cultural appropriateness. In this paper, the authors use semiotic analysis to consider both advertising that has violated ideological rules and advertising that has successfully transmitted desired ideological messages. And the authors have selected four advertising cases that help clarify the perceptions regarding political ideology in China.

Summary
This paper argues that culture - routinely ignored by "traditional" market research - can be an inspiring and effective source of insights for developing brand strategy and innovation, especially when combined with more consumer-centric methods. It illustrates this with a detailed case study of a research project undertaken by Pfizer to identify new opportunities in the women's health market in Europe. The pharma company used a three-stage process of mapping the category’s cultural and consumer orthodoxies; identifying new opportunities and cultural tactics; and crafting a brand and innovation strategy. The project identified a range of macro changes taking place in women’s health (e.g. women's new achievements and growing confidence, and a shift from health being seen as "binary" to encompassing a wider "wellbeing"). The project enabled Pfizer to message women effectively across Europe, it challenged how it launched new pills globally and led to a restructuring of the company. The paper concludes that market researchers are ideally placed to develop strong frameworks for cultural analysis and integrate these into their work with powerful impact.

Summary
This paper uses a case study of a research project for Nestlé's NESTEA iced tea brand to highlight the importance of effective collaboration between a client's insight function, its market research agency and its advertising agency to bring customer segments to life. Such an approach, it argues, ensures that insights and learnings are deployed throughout an organisation and actually acted upon. The NESTEA project involved two consumer segments ("Youthful and Carefree" and "Individual and Purposeful") and involved the advertising agency conducting in-home research, followed by fuller qualitative research by the research agency (with life collages, filming consumption behaviour, visual diaries and 'Me and my NESTEA' self-scripting). To deploy these learnings throughout the organisation, the agencies ran a series of workshops to immerse marketers in the lifestyles of the segments. These consumer insights were fed into the development of communications by the advertising agency and have also informed the creation of a platform for portfolio management and brand activation.

Summary
The fastest growing source of data is the unstructured voices of nearly two billion people speaking in social media. Traditional quant is too crude, while traditional qual is swamped. This presentation shows how the tools of discourse analysis - from psycholinguistics, to conversation analysis, to Foucault - can be used to interpret and unlock the meaning in the chatter. Your notions of language, structure and the location of issues such as attitudes and memory will be challenged, leaving you in a new world you may find a little more exciting, yet a little scarier.

Summary
It is fast becoming apparent that the human imagination and the fantasies it makes possible are crucial for human happiness on a day-to-day level. It has always been believed that the imagination is a subjective and idiosyncratic capacity, however recent research has shown that this is not the case – the things people hope, fantasise and dream about are shaped by culture. This paper shows how we have used semiotics to understand how and what consumers imagine and fantasise about and how brands and communications can use this resource to create highly compelling strategies, and ultimately that the imagination is a massive source of untapped value.